The Tesla Valve: One Way Flow With No Moving Parts
blog.makezine.com
blog.makezine.com
A ramjet?
If anyone is interested, there are some very cool no-moving-parts jets that aren't as well known as ramjets: The lockwood hiller pulsejet is a pulsejet that doesn't need reed valves. http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/valveless.htm
The Gluhareff Pressure jet is also a neat example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluhareff_Pressure_Jet
So, like that prototype Bruce Simpson was talking about ten years ago?
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UX5eNg...
Could you make an array of them oriented perpendicular to the plane, like a sheet?
Could you make it light enough to float on sound?
What kinds of things might it be good for? Sound dampening?
Could a paddlewheel configuration extract energy from air or liquid flow in any direction?
You could make an array of them perpendicular to a plane. Perhaps, by etching them into silicon. On a macro scale, you could machine them with a CNC machine, or even with hand tools depending on your tolerances.
For sound, you energy density is rather low, so the material you wish to propel would have to be incredibly light. And you would probably have better luck trying to lift a plate of some super light material. The Tesla Valve is most useful as a device where you want to check the flow from moving one way.
Anywhere, where having a moving part is a pain in the butt, and you want a more robust system. When you're etching things into silicon, generally, you want to avoid have to make lots of tiny micromechanisms.
As a paddlewheel, it would probably not make sense to use the Tesla Valve. Turbines are well understood. If you want to make rotary motion, that's the way to go.
Would be fascinating to see what rate of wave action you would need to keep the flow going up hill.
On a pure art level building a pool on the beach that was filled with wave action like this would be kind of fun.
I'm not sure that a Tesla Valve would be all that useful for tapping wave motion now that I think of it. It might not work. One way to think of it is to imagine using a one way ball valve. That has helped me in the past from ascribing too much magic or revolutionary nature to the Tesla Valve.
Imagine a square tube that at one end underwater is just an open pipe which connects with this square tube which goes up out of the water on the beach to a pool which is say 10' above the water line. The pool has a drain which feeds a square trough going back down into the water.
The trough has a micro-hydro wheel in it. Or just for fun a pelton water wheel type wheel which drives an animated sculpture.
The interesting question for me, is this; Can the Tesla valve reduce the back flow of sea water enough that the following wave arrives with the valve still holding water?
Intuitively you can see that if the valve is 'full' when the wave returns then the next wave will push its mass worth out the top of the valve. If the valve is say 'half' full then the next wave should fill it and every wave after that should dump a 'half' wave's worth of water into the pool. This would be a good problem to set up for students learning computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as they could vary things like the angle of the elements, their size, and their quantity and characterize the abilities of the valve for various fluids.
Anyway, its a really interesting gizmo.
My current jet engine work does not include a Tesla Valve, though much of it is inspired by it. When I began, I imagined using a pulse jet, and attaching an axialy rotated tesla valve to the front of it, in order to replace the reed valves. I eventually moved away from pulsed combustion though. Too noisy and not the pressure levels I wanted.
And seems like routing one out of aluminum on a CNC would be good as well.
The author's occasional dry humour is also quite welcome. Here's a sample: "Due to his meager funds and general inability to budget himself, Tesla had but one suit, which had withered from use. It was the time of a religious festival, and Szigeti inquired what Tesla would be wearing. Stuck for an answer, the youthful inventor came upon the clever idea of turning his suit inside out, planning thereby to show up with a seemingly new set of clothes. All night was spent tailoring and ironing. But when one starts with a wrong premise, no amount of patching can right the problem. The outfit looked ridiculous, and Tesla stayed home instead."
My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla http://www.amazon.com/My-Inventions-Autobiography-Nikola-Tes...
He had his own vision of a "singularity" basically interconnectedness of all human kind across earth to "rid ourselves" of war. Free energy, etc. Held full models of his machines and ideas in his head (spatially fascinating) before construction.
Several nervous of mental breakdowns when over-working, strange debilitating flashes of light, etc. Probably some brain chemistry idiosyncrasies.
I'd recommend "The Prestige" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/
which has a fascinating portrayal of Tesla as a kind of mad techno Wizard (played by David Bowie of all people).
Also, in some weird way, having Tesla as the inventor leant an air of credibility to an other wise ludicrous plot point.
It helps that Tesla's personality was bit off in real life, and he did things that even today we think of as a kind of magic.
Of course in the movie what he built was impossible, but the notion that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" kept creeping into my mind.
So people tend to downvote witty comments unless they find them very funny.
No doubt that Tesla was a bright person though.
In the field of fluid dynamics, it is referred to as a check valve. [1][2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_valve
[2] http://www.spiraxsarco.com/resources/steam-engineering-tutor...
But those sources you list describe several types of check valves, all of which have moving parts.
There might be some interesting applications for a device that passes two things, say a fluid and a gas, in one direction and resists the fluid (but not the gas) in another.
Most all check valves use moving parts; the Tesla Valve is novel because it does not.
I added the sources for those that might want to satisfy their curiosity when thinking, "I wonder what type of device a Tesla Valve is?"
Although the Tesla Valve does not use moving parts, that does not mean that it is not classified as a check valve. Tesla's descriptions from his patent [1] describe the valve as only permitting flow through it in one direction, which is the essential operation of a check valve:
"[...] a series of recesses or pockets with surfaces that reverse a fluid tending to flow in one direction therein and thereby check or prevent flow of the fluid in that direction." (Page 5, Item 3)
"[...] and thereby check their progress when impelled in the opposite sense." (Page 5, Item 5)
"[...] reverse such fluid impulses when impelled in the opposite direction and check their flow." (Page 5, Item 6)
Easy to dismiss genius - it all seems so obvious now!
I wonder if a fractal version of this would work better. And what if there were side channels on the top and bottom too.
Of course, this will always pass some fluid. but if you need a complete shutoff valve, combining it with the tesla valve would allow you to use a smaller one and makes its failure less traumatic.
Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube Another simple yet fascinating device
And if you already have a 3D printer, you can get the files free here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16919
But then, he was thinking a lot about electron flow and built up a good intuition that had wider application. That doesn't make it any less amazing to me though. I'd like to be able to do that.
thinking of anyone as a supernatural genius is nonsense. most of the time.
The general idea is that if the time is ripe for an idea then someone somewhere will have it, and if that someone would not exist someone else will have the idea a short while after.
But for the men mentioned above I highly doubt that would be the case, they were both way ahead of the curve at the time.
Probably it would be an effective mixing device too.
http://www.tfcbooks.com/special/my_inventions_index.htm
[1] I'm a bit confused as to whether it was genuinely an autobiography, or a compilation of articles. Either way, it was interesting to read, though very light on technical details.
There are also some versions on the internet which include fake sentences inserted later by some religious zealot mentioning "God, Divine Being." Take care not to link to those.